On Sat, 2006-07-01 at 09:27, Mike - EMAIL IGNORED wrote: > When I use a shared library, is it all in memory, > or is only the object code currently in use in > memory? I ask because I have some object code > that will be used only rarely. There is nothing special about shared libraries in this respect except that other programs might already had loaded them. Executable code is paged in on demand when accessed - if you don't access it (or something nearby), it doesn't load into RAM. You don't have a lot of control over that 'nearby' part though - if the part you execute is spread out and needs an assortmet of static data, you may end up with the whole thing in memory because of the page granularity. Shared libraries have some overhead compared to static linkage too - they are only a real win if multiple programs load them or if they aren't linked initially and you sometimes/rarely use dlopen() to access them. -- Les Mikesell lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx
